The Other Child (26 page)

‘Do you have the impression that Jennifer Brankley sees herself as Gwen's protector in some way?'

‘Jennifer is ten years older than Gwen. She might try to mother her a little. What are you getting at?'

‘I'm trying to understand all the elements and find some order in them,' Valerie replied rather vaguely.

Leslie thought for a minute and then laughed. ‘You don't mean that Jennifer Brankley kilLed my grandmother? To save the relationship between Gwen and Dave Tanner? Acting as Gwen's
übermother
so to speak?'

‘I don't mean anything, Dr Cramer. Above all, I don't want to draw any premature conclusions. There are two possibilities. Perhaps Fiona Barnes was killed by someone she didn't know, who just met her by chance – but given the late hour and the isolated location of the farm, that doesn't seem all that probable. So the second possibility seems more likely: it was someone from the engagement party – or rather, what should have been a party.'

‘So, you suspect me, Colin and Jennifer Brankley, Dave Tanner, Gwen and Chad Beckett.'

‘I haven't got that far. As I said, I'm just ordering things. I'm trying to look behind the scenes, as it were.'

‘How absurd, Inspector. It's unimaginable that it would be one of us.'

‘Can you say that with absolute certainty? You only know Gwen and Chad Beckett really well. All the others were – and remain – essentially strangers to you.'

Leslie thought about this sentence on her way back. She drove up the coast road towards Scarborough. There were breathtaking views of the sea here, but today the fog hid everything from sight. To top it all, it was now growing dark. The fog, the darkness, the cold.

It suited a day for identifying the dead body of the woman who had been her last living relative.

From now on, I'm really on my own, thought Leslie. She was freezing, although she had turned up the heating and it was roasting in the car. When Stephen and I separated, I still had Fiona. Now there's no one else.

She clung to Valerie Almond's words, so that she did not get swallowed up in thoughts of her own loneliness. She had managed not to cry all day – she did not want to start now.

It was true that she did not really know anyone here apart from Gwen and Chad. Now that she thought about it, right from the start she had found Jennifer a dosed book, Colin too. He looked like a respectable, slightly stuffy bank employee, but something about him told her that he was not; there was more to him than that, but perhaps he had not found a way to express it. Perhaps he was somebody who was never challenged enough, never valued for who he was.

But we all have our weak points, thought Leslie. That doesn't turn us into murderers. How would DI Almond characterise me? Frustrated, single, a successful career woman but privately a failure. Disappointed by men, perhaps disappointed by life in general. Difficult childhood with a drug-dependent mother. Then growing up with her grandmother, which is no real substitute for a proper, intact family.

I'd be the right material to go crazy and kill an old woman. Valerie Almond might be wondering what I held against Fiona.

Her thoughts had turned back to Fiona despite her best efforts. She had to make sure she didn't get sentimental.

So, things to hold against her:
You were damn cold. I can say that, because if there's one truly strong memory of my mother I have, it's that she was so warm. So happy. Over-excited, no doubt, and doped up to her eyeballs on some drug, totally high, but I didn't know that then. I just remember that she used to hold me a lot. Take me in her arms. Press me close. I would snuggle up close to her at night to sleep
…

Careful, Leslie. Don't idealise her. She had no end of men. You know that from Fiona, but you also have hazy memories of a good many longhaired guys at the breakfast table in the mornings. So some nights she'll have thrown you out of her bed mercilessly, you'll have had to sleep somewhere else because she preferred to screw away happily than to cuddle her little girl. Tough for a child who is used to something else
.

Fiona was the embodiment of stability. Everything had its place. She would never have let me sleep in her bed, but also not thrown me out when she felt like it. I had my room, and my own bed. Everything was predictable. Everything was cold
.

She drove towards a lay-by that she could barely see in the fog. She parked and pulled out a cigarette. She had to stop thinking of Fiona and her childhood. It wasn't safe. One thing came fast on the heels of another, and before long there was no stopping the thoughts. She had good mechanisms for protecting herself. She could not allow herself to break down because of Fiona's death.

She was almost relieved to hear her mobile ring, although she suspected it would be Stephen calling, concerned for her. He had no right to be.

However, it was not Stephen. It was Colin Brankley.

‘Sorry to bother you, Leslie … I tried to reach you at your grandmother's flat. A gentleman answered the phone and gave me your mobile number …'

She saw no reason to explain that the
gentleman
was her ex. She did not like Colin Brankley. She realised that in this moment. He was opaque. Maybe not even honest.

So she just said, ‘Yes?'

‘It's that … my wife is worried. Gwen left the house this morning and still hasn't come back.'

‘Is that so unusual?'

‘Actually, yes. At least she always says where she's going – if she goes anywhere. And she doesn't often.'

‘Maybe she's at her boyfriend's place. Couldn't she be?'

‘Yes …' said Colin slowly. It did not sound as though he really thought it were possible.

‘She'll be making up with Dave. I hope so, anyway. After that sorry party, they've certainly got a few things to clear up.'

‘I don't have Dave Tanner's number.'

Leslie knew that Colin was probably acting under pressure from his wife, and that Jennifer in turn was guided by her concern for Gwen, but she could not help feeling annoyed. Gwen was thirty-five years old. She could stay out as long as she liked without needing to explain herself to anyone, let alone her paying guests. It was unacceptable for someone like Colin Brankley to be calling round after her.

Her voice sounded sharper than she had intended when she replied. ‘I don't have Tanner's number either. And I don't think it's up to us to keep tabs on Gwen. She's old enough to know what she's doing.'

‘Of course. It's just that after everything that's happened …'

‘I can't see any reason to snoop on her.'

‘Well, I didn't see Jennifer and myself as spies,' replied Colin coolly, and hung up without a goodbye.

He was miffed. So what. What had the Brankleys to do with her?

She drove on. Whether or not she wanted it, she was rather unsettled by the conversation. Gwen was a grown-up, she had a steady boyfriend whom she wanted to marry, and normally there would be nothing unusual in her wanting to stay away from home for a day and a night. But what was normal about Gwen? Could she and her behaviour be measured by the usual standards?

And was the wider situation at all normal? A young woman brutally murdered in a lonely part of Scarborough. An old lady bludgeoned to death on the edge of a pasture. And Gwen's fiancé among the suspects the police had their eye on …

Leslie was briefly tempted to drive over to Dave Tanner's place. Just to pop in and check that everything was as it should be. But with what reason?

Hi, Gwen, I just wanted to check everything was OK. We were worried
…

Gwen's big problem in life was that she had never really grown up. She might finally manage to do that with Dave. Shouldn't she be supported in that, rather than treated like a child?

She rejected the idea of dropping by Tanner's place and drove straight to her grandmother's flat instead.

She had to admit that it was nice to see the lights on in the windows. She had just taken leave of her grandmother on a foggy autumn day – a cold, dark flat could have been rather depressing. Unlocking the upstairs door, she could smell that Stephen had been cooking. Curry, coriander … It smelt warm and enticing. Through the open living room door she could see that candles were burning on the dining room table. Stephen stepped out of the kitchen. He had a dishcloth tucked around his waist and a glass of white wine in his hand.

‘There you are!' For a moment it seemed as if he were about to put the glass down and give her a hug, but something held him back. So he stood there uncertainly. ‘How was it? How are you?'.

She took off her coat. ‘Well, it wasn't exactly lovely. And I'm not doing great. But I'm all right.'

‘You sure?'

‘Yes!' She took the glass from his hand and had a large sip. ‘Good thing we went shopping.'

‘I cooked your favourite dish.'

‘That's nice of you. Thanks.'

He smiled.

Suddenly she thought: he's so gentle. Tries so hard. He … curries favour. It would have gone wrong between us anyway. He's not the man I need, who suits me, whom I want.

This realisation was completely new. It came to her like a flash that moment in the kitchen door. It was a big surprise to her. Stephen and Leslie – weren't they a dream couple, made for each other? They had only broken up because Stephen had fallen for the flattery of another woman in a moment of weakness; he had destroyed what was indestructible – that was what she had always believed in her anger and desire for revenge.

Maybe she had got it wrong. Maybe he had only speeded up something which one way or another was bound to happen.

He saw the changing expressions on her face and could see that something was moving her deeply. ‘What is it?'

‘Nothing.' She gave herself a shake, like a dog, and in a few quick gulps emptied the glass. Now just don't think about it, not about her and Stephen.

‘Anything happen here?' she asked instead.

‘A Mr Brankley called. From the Beckett farm. They're worried about Gwen. I gave him your mobile number.'

‘I know. He called. I think his worries are over the top. Gwen's probably in bed with Dave having a good time.'

‘That'd be good.' He paused. She felt there was something else.

‘Yes?'

‘Someone else called,' said Stephen awkwardly.

Leslie was immediately alarmed. ‘Not the …?'

‘It was an anonymous call,' said Stephen. ‘Just like the one you described. Silence. Breathing. And then hanging up.'

She stared at him. ‘But Fiona's dead!'

Maybe the caller doesn't know. It might not be the murderer.'

‘Or,' said Leslie slowly, ‘her death isn't enough for him. He's got it in for all of us. The whole family.'

‘That's crazy,' retorted Stephen.

He did not sound completely convinced of what he said.

The Other Child.doc

7

When did Emma's health start to fail? Or when did we notice? I cannot say for sure now. I was thinking only about Chad. At times, in the autumn of 1941 and spring of 1942, a German bomb could have fallen on the Beckett farm and I would not have noticed a thing. I was in love, head over heels incurably in love, and there was nothing else which would have interested me. I was not even thirteen yet, but I think there were many elements in my biography which made me mature early – as my mother did not tire of telling me. There was my father's drink problem, our continual worries about money, then my father's early death, the war, the bombs, and that night in the air-raid shelter when the house collapsed above us … Plus the sudden separation from my mother and lastly the feeling that she had betrayed me in favour of a completely unknown man. All of that had taken much of my childhood, had robbed me of my childhood innocence. I felt grown up. I was wrong, of course, but I was more mature than my twelve years suggested. Mentally and physically I was well into puberty.

Chad and I stole time together whenever we had the opportunity. That was not always easy. I had to go to school and lost a lot of time walking there and back, and Chad's father had him working from morning until night on the farm. But again and again we managed to steal away. Our rendezvous was the barren, stony patch of beach down in the bay, even in the winter when the easterly wind would whip in from the sea and freeze our noses blue. But I liked the grim cold, maybe because it made Chad's hugs all the warmer and gave me the feeling that I had found a safe haven.

At that time we did not have sex. I think we did not dare to. My feelings were more romantic in nature. I did not yet sense physical desire, or only the start of it under layers of fear and uncertainty. No doubt it was different for Chad, but he kept his head and simply found me too young. When spring came, and with it warm days and long, light evenings when we could have made love on our ‘secret' beach, he was tempted more than once. Each time he quickly untangled himself, pulled himself away as much as he could.

So we normally just talked, and nearly always about the same things. Today I wonder why we did not get tired of those topics after a while, but at the time it was all so exciting, even repeating the same old stories. To be precise: Chad's eternal lament about the war and the fact that he could not take part. It vexed him no end, made him angry, at times almost depressed. I remember that I once interjected shyly: ‘But if you went to the front, you wouldn't be able to be with me!'

‘The one has nothing to do with the other,' replied Chad.

‘They do. Either you're in the war, or here with me. I'd miss you like mad if you weren't here any more.'

‘Maybe you don't understand yet. It's about more than just my feeling or yours. It's about England. It's about a crazy dictator who is attacking foreign countries. He has to be stopped!'

Secretly I could not see how Hitler's demise was dependent on Chad going to the front or not, but I saw what he meant and said no more about it. Nevertheless it did make me sad. I felt the difference. Chad had a second passion in his life and it was very big, perhaps even bigger than his feelings for me.